


Faint of Heart

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Class Issues, Developing Relationship, Dubious Morality, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, Manipulative Relationship, Memory Loss, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Character Death, Possessive Behavior, Romance, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-08-26 11:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: Daphne is a sad, penniless orphan with no marriage prospects or surviving family to speak of.(No, she’s not.)[ ALTERNATIVELY - the anastasia au ]





	1. Part I

* * *

 

Daphne is a sad, penniless orphan with no prospects or surviving family to speak of.

(No, she’s not.)

 

* * *

 

The old Greengrass house looms like a creaking, half-rotten hilltop specter on the outskirts of town.

Daphne has always been drawn to it—inexplicably, irreverently—but the nuns are creative enough with their punishments that she’s never quite dared to cross the threshold; never quite dared to slip through the imposing, needle-spired gates, past the rusty hinges and the towering cast-iron, and explore whatever long-broken hints of the aristocracy remain in the rubble.

She’s never quite dared to do a lot of things.

Now, though.

Now, she has a third-class train ticket to nowhere in one hand and a mostly empty rucksack in the other and there’s really nothing _stopping_ her, is there?

The cobblestone drive is smooth with age, mossy around the edges, and she feels a faint thrill of recognition as she takes a breath, fills her lungs with the loamy, autumn-crisp breeze, a telltale tingle scraping down the ridges of her spine; horse hooves clopping, carriage wheels spinning—she can _hear_ it, if she just shuts her eyes and focuses, she swears she can—

A daydream, then.

Lips quirking, she plucks at the drab gray fabric of her dress. Her boots are scuffed, pinching her toes, and her nails are cracked and uneven. The nuns had cut her hair with kitchen shears before tossing her out, and there were bruises dotting her ribs, a waxy patchwork quilt of barely visible scars coating the backs of her knuckles.

She matches the house, at least.

Daphne pauses with one foot on the crumbling brick steps leading up to the front door. The splintered wreckage of it—gorgeously, lovingly crafted, twelve feet tall and peppered with engravings, elegant, nonsensical swirls, twining vines of ivy and long-stemmed roses, as delicate as they are vicious—is giving her a fleeting, hard-to-catch sense of déjà vu, like she’s seen it before, like she’s _been here_ before, this exact, precise spot with this exact, precise view.

She shakes her head.

There’s a harsh, piercing cry, and a crow swoops down, rustling the branches of a nearby apple tree.

She steps forward.

The inside of the house is simultaneously everything and nothing like she was expecting it to be, and she isn’t sure if she’s disappointed by it or not. The floors are scratched and moldy, the ceiling weather-warped and sagging, the wallpaper peeling and the chandeliers cobwebbed and the atmosphere oppressive, unsettling, the hallways and the furniture and the paintings, the tapestries, riddled with bullet holes and smeared with blood.

Daphne shivers and drags her feet and wanders, a little aimless, a little frightened, clutching her rucksack to her chest in a pitiful parody of a real hug.

Her heart is racing.

Her pulse is hammering.

A swampy knot of unease is tying itself tighter and tighter in the pit of her stomach.

She blinks once, and then twice, and then three times, instinctive, disconcerted—because there, _there_ , right in her periphery, just out of her field of vision, a sputtering candle, a formless shadow, an opulent silk ballgown twitching around the far corner while an orchestra climbs an unsteady ladder into the swaying, topsy-turvy rafters of an unmistakable crescendo; and there, too, a shattered window and a flaming glass bottle and a vibrant red cape fluttering in the frosty winter wind, twinkling blue eyes and a hard, triumphant smile—an eerie mismatch that she’s convinced she must have imagined. Must be imagining.

An extremely _morbid_ daydream, then.

Except—

The air stirs.

The floorboards groan.

And then a large, masculine hand is grabbing her elbow, jerking her backwards, and her hat is flying off, taking her hairpin with it, causing her slightly messy braid to unravel as she spins around—

He’s handsome, is her first entirely inane, entirely inappropriate observation.

He’s _livid_ , is her second.

She shrinks away, closer to the wall, close enough for the heavy, ostentatious gilt frame of a painting—a portrait, faded and torn, of two little girls in lacy white pinafores sitting on a rocking chair—to dig painfully into her lower back.

“Please,” Daphne whispers, voice trembling, “I’ll go, I promise, you don’t have to . . . to hurt me.”

The man—tall and young and pale, black-haired and red-lipped and sharp-featured and _composed_ despite the anger lurking in the depths of his clear, dark, almost colorless eyes—slowly releases her arm, gaze flicking from her face to the painting behind her. He’s wearing a sleek, well-tailored pair of plain gray trousers, polished boots and a matching waistcoat, his shirtsleeves folded up to his elbows and a hint of stubble dusting the hinge of his jaw.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, and his accent is crisp but not quite natural; deliberately imperfect. Deliberately neutral. “What’s your name?”

She swallows. “Daphne.”

“ _Daphne,_ ” he echoes, barking out a short, humorless laugh. He studies her intently, thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed, his lips parted, and then glances at the painting again. “Daphne, Daphne. _Daphne._ Last name?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” she admits, and she should be _used_ to the ensuing stab of frailty, of vulnerability, like an exposed nerve, an open wound, but it still stings. It still burns. “I’ve never had one.”

Abruptly, he starts to smile, really smile, _truly_ smile, and it’s slightly crooked, wholly magnetic, more cunning than bashful, offering her a brief glimpse of neat white teeth and slyly captivating charm and it transforms him, utterly, widens the too-patrician slant of his nose and softens the cut of his cheekbones, the shape of his mouth—because he’s so much _more_ than just _handsome_.

It’s the unhappiest smile she’s ever seen, and her scalp prickles with dread at the thought.

(No, it doesn’t.)

 

* * *

 

“The massacre,” Tom Riddle begins, leaning sideways into the grimy periwinkle walls of a virtually untouched drawing room. “What were you taught about it?”

Daphne twists her fingers together in her lap, shifting restlessly on the edge of the settee. It isn’t comfortable, but the worn bottle-green velvet is as luxurious as it is distracting. She suspects she might be overreacting—to him, to the situation, to the settee. She’s never performed particularly well under pressure.

“The Greengrass family,” she says cautiously, “they were all—murdered. Slaughtered. The first of the aristocrats to go. It’s what sparked the revolution. The—the Greater Good.”

Tom crosses his arms over his chest and jerks his chin towards the warm yellow glow of the oil lamp. “They had daughters. Two of them. Astoria, the younger sister—she survived, actually, but the older girl—” He stops, licks his lips, and then smirks. “Her name was _Daphne_.”

Daphne freezes, breath hitching, and bunches her hands up, reflexively straightening them back out, the weight of Tom’s words—this _stranger’s_ words, this stranger who doesn’t feel anything like a stranger, who’s hardly even treating her like one—settling over her like a curse. A spell. A bad omen.

“I don’t—”

The drawing room door crashes open.

“Tom, _Tom_ , I think someone else is here, there are _footprints_ in the . . . in the foyer . . .” The man—short, young, skinny, wild-haired and harried-looking and so much less intimidating than Tom Riddle—trails off as he notices her. No, as he _stares_ at her. Aghast. Nonplussed. There’s a dull gold watch chain peeking out from his waistcoat pocket, and an ill-fitting haughtiness to his demeanor, the kind that used to come from private tutors and dancing lessons and old money. “Is that who I think it is?”

Tom snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The man furrows his brow, visibly incredulous. “ _You_ don’t be ridiculous! Look at her!”

Tom’s mouth twists. “Lestrange.”

“What?”

“ _She_ ,” Tom emphasizes, nodding at Daphne, “is the answer to all our problems.”

“Because . . .” Lestrange’s eyes go wide. “Of her uncanny resemblance to a dead girl?”

Daphne flinches. “Excuse me,” she finally interjects, her toes curling inside her boots, “what are you talking about?”

Tom peers at her, patronizing, speculative, before flapping his hand, gesturing to the motheaten curtains and the tarnished candelabra and the dusty cuckoo clock hanging above the mantel.

“Astoria Greengrass is searching for her older sister,” he says.

Daphne pinches her fingertips together and glances at Lestrange, who’s ventured farther into the room, his expression more troubled than befuddled. “I thought the older sister was . . . I thought she was dead. Everyone said she was dead.”

Tom shrugs, noncommittal, apathetic, and then sniffs. “Astoria Greengrass has apparently been informed otherwise.”

“By _who?_ ” Daphne blurts out, hurrying to add, “It’s just—that’s really very—it’s been _fifteen years_. Isn’t it odd? That she would believe—that?”

Tom shrugs again, grimly amused. “She’s spent most of her life heavily guarded and understandably paranoid, with no one for company but what few foreign supporters the aristocracy has left. A kind of self-imposed house arrest. She’s likely just desperate to believe she isn’t alone.”

At that, Daphne registers a pang of sympathy—muted, poignant, deeply buried, an indulgence she rarely allows herself because she’s spent most of _her_ life without any tangible assurance that it _matters_. She doesn’t have a past, not really, and she doesn’t have a future, either, not unless she goes out and steals one for herself.

But then—

She’s struck, hard, by the meaning of all of this—Tom’s ambiguous remarks about her name, Lestrange’s far less ambiguous remarks about her appearance—and she frowns, tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear.

“You want me to . . . pretend?” she hedges, scandalized. “To be her older sister?”

Tom doesn’t outwardly react. “There’s a bit more to it than that, but for now—yes. That’s what I want.”

Lestrange awkwardly shuffles forward. “I know that sounds . . . ah, cold-blooded, but it’s really for the be—”

“It sounds _cruel_ ,” Daphne interrupts, biting down on her bottom lip to hold in the rest of her tirade. She isn’t certain where it’s coming from. Why she’s bothered. Why she cares. “It sounds . . . I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t do that.”

“Oh, are you busy?” Tom asks snidely, pushing off from the wall, sauntering towards her—predatory, confident, deceptively graceful. “Are you on your way to something _better?_ Do you have any plans beyond a cotton mill, if you’re lucky, or a brothel, if you aren’t?”

Daphne flushes and ducks her chin, wilting under his scrutiny, unable to muster a response.

She isn’t, of course, busy, and she isn’t, of course, on her way to something better, and she doesn’t have any plans. Not real ones. Not _good_ ones. She’s as untethered as she’s ever been, as she’s ever going to be, adrift and directionless, _alone_ , and perhaps that’s why she feels such an unexpected sense of loyalty, of kinship, to this girl she’s never met. It’s sentimental, though. It’s idiotic.

It’s _wasteful._

Tom stops next to the settee, and there’s a beat of silence, tense, anticipatory, before he bends down, leaning in, and asks, “May I?”

“May you—what?” Daphne stammers.

He meets her eyes, no, _catches_ her eyes, and the intensity is overwhelming, disarming, and it hits her the very same way the fear did the summer the nuns insisted she learn how to swim—like merely dipping her toe into the river water could be fatal, could leave her sinking and drowning and gasping for breath.

“May I _touch_ you, Daphne?” he murmurs.

She hesitates.

But then she nods, quickly, unsteadily, and he reaches out like he’s gentling a skittish horse, carefully plastering his hand to the arch of her spine and pushing in, straightening, molding, correcting her posture, the _shape_ of her, in one long smooth stroke.

His palm is warm and firm and electrifying where it rests against the small of her back, and she vows to ignore it.

(No, she doesn’t.)

 

* * *

 

The train rumbles through the countryside, chugging past yellowing grass and thatch-roofed villages and soot-streaked inns, vast, slinking swathes of moorland and swooping arcs of pastured meadow and a storm cloud-crinkled horizon.

Daphne sits in a private, mahogany paneled compartment, idly trying not to grimace too obviously when the boning of her new corset digs into her ribs; additionally, there’s the urge to fidget, too, with her elegantly upswept hair—new—and her plum-purple silk brocade dress—new—and the delicate dusting of rice powder on her nose, to mask the freckles—new, new, new, it’s all new, it’s all strange, it’s all uncomfortable, and that fact is compounded, made infinitely more complicated if not outright worse, by Tom.

By how Tom keeps stealing glances at her.

A little bit hungry, a little bit smug, a little bit intrigued—but mostly, no, entirely like she’s a hard-won carnival prize, a long-coveted family heirloom, and he’s not about to give her up without a fight. Without a _war_.

“ _Relax,_ will you?” he eventually drawls, stretching his legs out in front of him and draping a careless arm across the back of the red velvet-upholstered bench seat. His fingertips graze the nape of her neck, a ghost of a whisper of contact that she can’t really imagine is by design but doesn’t quite trust _isn’t_ , either. She barely manages to suppress an answering shiver. “We have _at least_ a day of travel left, you’re going to give yourself a migraine.”

Lestrange huffs out a laugh, tugging at his cravat and flashing Daphne a friendly albeit tentative half-smile. “Tom’s right, actually,” he says apologetically.

“About what?”

“Mm? What’s that?”

Daphne stiffly scoots forward, pins and needles cascading down her legs. “Tom’s right about _what?_ ”

Lestrange snaps the pages of his newspaper. “ _You’re_ supposed to wear the _corset_ , not the other way around.”

“Oh.”

“Are you alright?”

Daphne hiccups around a shallow breath. “It’s just—I think you tied the, the corset too tight, and I’m not used to . . . to doing _nothing_ but _drink tea,_ and I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do with—” She helplessly holds up her baby-soft, freshly manicured hands. “I don’t even know where you’re _taking_ me.”

Tom taps the knob of her shoulder with his thumb. “Don’t phrase it like that.”

“I’m—excuse me?”

“We aren’t _taking_ you,” he says. “We’re _escorting_ you. You’re an active participant in your own destiny. Don’t forget that, and don’t you dare ever settle for less.”

Daphne blinks at him, taken aback by his tone of voice—sharp, quiet, cutting, irritated, _vehement_ , rather like he’s reciting a religious affirmation to himself in the mirror, not speaking directly to her, directly _at_ her—and then clears her throat as daintily as she can after a week’s worth of seemingly endless lessons from Lestrange.

“Tom just doesn’t appreciate the insinuation that he’s a kidnapper,” Lestrange says loudly, with a conspiratorial wink. “That brand of dirty work isn’t _precisely_ his forte.”

“That’s . . . right, yes, of course. Not a kidnapper. I didn’t mean to—insinuate . . . that.” Daphne presses her lips together and swallows. “But that doesn’t, um, that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Oh, was there a question?” Tom asks mildly. “I couldn’t tell.”

Before she can respond, their compartment is rattled by an abrupt, nauseating jolt.

Distantly, there’s then the faint, whining, grinding shriek of steel on steel, the split-second slither of the train careening off the rails and whistling through the air and the echoing thumps of luggage falling off the racks and—

And a booming, _explosive_ crash.

It’s chaos, after that.

There’s yelling and swearing and crying and screaming and Tom is leaping to his feet and grabbing her by the wrist, by the waist, shoving her towards the ground and then the window, back and forth, and then, finally, deciding to shield her with his much broader frame as he corrals her to the door.

“Don’t let go of me!” he shouts, dragging his had up and down the line of her back in what she—wildly, hysterically—assumes is meant to be a soothing motion. “We’re going to have to climb out before the fire spreads!”

“Before the _what_ spreads?” Daphne bleats.

But the lamps are swaying, oil sputtering, flames rippling, glass darkening, and oh, _oh,_ there it is, she can smell the smoke, smell the _fire_ , hot and thick, heavy and acidic, and it’s positively stomach-turning, how it coats the back of her tongue, and it’s positively terrifying, how it drifts and swirls, closer and closer and closer.

“Go!” Tom bellows at Lestrange, kicking at the splintered, crumpled ruins of what had once been the door to the dining car. Daphne instinctively inhales, the ash charring her throat, her lungs, her soft palate, and then coughs and gags, twisting in Tom’s grasp to bury her face in his chest, in his neck, in the fabric of his jacket. “—the engine room, wherever the fire is, see if he left anything, you know what to look for, those stupid—those _symbols_ , him and Grindelwald—”

Her ears are ringing.

And it isn’t the first time she’s had a stray, fleeting _suspicion_ that there’s more to this ruse of Tom’s than he’s letting on; that he’s hiding something, something significant, something earth-shattering and shocking and gravely, personally secret—

But it is the first time it’s occurred to her to wonder if that something might be _dangerous_.

(No, it isn’t.)

 

* * *

 


	2. Part II

* * *

 

Daphne lowers herself into the steaming hot bath, wincing at the blistering sting of the water, just as the rickety plywood door creaks open.

She goes still, bird-like, her chin tilted and her elbows bent, hovering half-in and half-out of the chipped porcelain tub. Her hair is loosely braided and pinned on top of her head, chunks of it escaping, fluttering down the slope of her back, and there’s a fine layer of ash blanketing most of her skin, her scalp, embedded in the lines of her palms and the crevices of her fingernails. The aftermath of the crash is looming in the forefront of her mind, the scent of scorched earth and burning coal and something else, too, something harsh and sickly sweet—a pale blue gelatinous substance that Lestrange had scraped off a barrel in the engine room and grimly passed over to Tom as soon as they’d arrived at the inn.

“Tom,” Lestrange is saying now, voice warier than Daphne’s ever heard it, “it might not have been him. Them. There wasn’t any evidence—”

“Of _course_ it was him!” Tom hisses, and there’s a thunderous clang, like he’s thrown the tea kettle against the wall, that has Daphne violently recoiling, sloshing water over the lip of the tub as she fumbles for the bar of lye soap and starts to shakily lather her arms. “Who _else_ could it have been?”

Tom sounds furious, scarily so, aggressive and aggravated, like he’s determined to tear the whole world apart at the seams, to rip and yank and claw and rend until there’s nothing left but whatever, but _whoever_ he decides is worth sparing.

Daphne clenches her jaw, blinking the moisture off the ends of her eyelashes, and smooths the soap suds over her cheeks in a meticulous circular motion.

She’s being careful.

Thorough.

The nuns had been strict about personal hygiene, but the water had never been warm. This—despite the mildew creeping across the ceiling and the questionable stains littering the bedding, the mold-spotted film on the windows and the wafer-thin paper divider separating her from the rest of the room—this is a _luxury_ , she reminds herself, scrubbing more insistently at a patch of ash on her wrist. This is not a hardship. This is not a sacrifice.

This is a _choice_.

Finally.

This is _her_ choice.

“It’s always him,” Tom continues after a moment, and the floorboards shift like he’s pacing, restless and wild. Maybe flexing his hands. Raking those long, impossibly elegant fingers through his hair. He’s the kind of handsome that’s contradictory—simultaneously arresting and engaging, cold and commanding. Sinful. Prideful. Lustful. “He’s been doing this for _years_ , since I was a _boy,_ this exactly how he—how _they_ operate. They pick their target and they plant their _bomb_ and they watch the, the _carnage_ from far enough away that they don’t have to worry about _retaliation_. This was on purpose. This was an _attack_.”

“Tom, I really think you might be—”

“The _Greater Good_ ,” Tom scoffs, bizarrely bitter, no, resentful, no, _no;_ bizarrely _jealous_. “No matter what they preach to their legion of peasants, this isn’t about being _good_ , this isn’t about being _great_ , even, this is about—about claiming ownership of places and people that aren’t _theirs_ , and I want to, oh, _I want to_ —”

“The conductor was shot!” Lestrange yelps, and then audibly claps his hand over his mouth.

A near-mutinous pause, and then: “ _What?_ ”

Lestrange gulps. “The conductor, when I went to—to check. Just to see. He was dead. Shot.”

“Self-inflicted?”

“ _What?_ No, it was—execution style. Bullet through the brain. Just like . . .”

Lestrange doesn’t finish, and Tom doesn’t offer to, and Daphne’s left to fill in the proverbial blanks herself as she draws her knees up, gnashes her teeth together, thinking, considering—

Why is she still _here?_ With Tom Riddle? Why hasn’t she begged off, conceded defeat, given in to the riotously sloshing current of—not fear, not exactly that, but something close. Agitation. Disquiet. A sixth sense certainty that this is all going to end miserably, in ways she can’t even begin to fathom or prepare for, and there won’t be any second chances.

Not for her, at least.

The door creaks again, hinges squeaking, dented brass knob rattling as it slams shut. Impatient footsteps thump back over to her, just the one set, and she realizes Lestrange must have left.

“Are you—done?” Tom calls out, clearing his throat.

Daphne stands up, her skin puckering in the cool night air, and reaches for the robe Tom had left draped over the back of the divider. It’s big, dark green, cozy, well-worn flannel, and it smells masculine, like chicory and firewood. She suspects it’s his.

“Yes,” she says, and he appears almost immediately on the far side of the bath, his sleeves rolled up and his waistcoat missing.

And for a moment, if that, he positively _stares_ at her, seemingly discomfited, his expression rippling with surprise, distrust, indecision–but then he coughs, his nostrils flaring, the tops of his ears pinking, and the silence begins to stretch tense and deep and thick between them.

“How much of that did you hear?” he demands, before correcting himself with an annoyed huff. “No—how much of that did you _understand?_ ”

She drops her eyes, teeth clamped around her bottom lip, and curls her toes into the scuffed wood floor. “The Greater Good,” she says haltingly. “You don’t . . . believe in it.”

He wrinkles his nose. “No one _believes_ in it, they’re just desperate enough to latch onto the _idea_. Like leeches. _Parasites_.”

“And the train crashing,” she goes on, voice mostly even, mostly level, mostly normal, “it wasn’t an accident. Someone was, um—trying to hurt you.”

“Yes,” he says slowly, crossing his arms over his lower abdomen, stance turning inexplicably combative. “They were. I’m not alone, though, am I?”

“Of—of course you aren’t.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I—oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that.”

Daphne twists the fabric of the robe between her fingertips. “Do what?”

“Act . . . _subservient_. You aren’t. You won’t be ever again.” He looks at her appraisingly. “What’s wrong?”

“Excuse me?”

“What,” he repeats, “is,” he raises his eyebrows, “ _wrong?_ ”

Her gaze flits from his arms to his chest to his shoes to the small triangle of bare skin peeking out from the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, the perfectly delicate hollow and the strong cord of muscle and the angles, the shadows, the jut of his cheekbones and his jaw and the breathtakingly dramatic contrast of his _mouth_ , lush and soft and red.

“You make me nervous,” she whispers, slightly too honest, slightly too plaintive, but she doesn’t know how to be anything else, how to be anyone else, and that’s all he seems to be asking of her. “You make me—”

“Yes?” he cuts in, eyes somehow darker than usual. “I make you what?”

She swallows. Licks her lips. Squares her shoulders, just like he’d taught her to, and confesses, “You make me _curious_.”

She wishes she was lying.

(No, she doesn’t.)

 

* * *

 

 

“The Greengrasses,” Tom says, with that same infectiously lazy deliberation that reminds her of a serpent waiting to strike, to pounce, "how much do you know about them?”

Daphne doesn’t immediately answer. She can recall, with a vivid, uncanny clarity, that spider-web tickle of _remembrance_ , back at the old house—the sound of horse hooves clopping, just as they are now, methodically, purposefully, hitched to the front of the carriage, and the phantom flicker of movement dancing just out of sight, the rasp of a ballgown dragging across the floor and the swish of a candle being blown out and the shattered window, the vibrant red cape, the winter wind and the twinkling blue eyes and the hard, triumphant smile—

“I already told you,” she says, oddly subdued. Her dress is green today, apple green, crisp and sleek and an almost identical match for the color of her eyes. Lestrange didn’t notice, of course, but Tom did. Tom always seems to notice. “They were massacred, and it was . . . it was the beginning. After that, all the other aristocrats died or ran.”

“Yes,” Tom agrees impatiently, “but what do you know about the _family?_ The sisters? The history?”

“Just what you’ve mentioned, I suppose.” Daphne squirms a bit, lacing and twisting her fingers, panic swelling in a great hulking wave behind her ribs—not that she can explain where it’s coming from, even to herself. “I don’t really . . . I don’t have any memories from before I was five or six.”

Tom freezes. “You have no memories of your childhood?” he asks, giving her a look so full of hidden meaning she thinks she must be imagining it. The severity. The excitement. “None at all?”

Daphne shrugs, fidgeting with the scalloped ivory lace peeking out from the cuffs of her dress. Hand-sewn. Pretty. “I had a head injury,” she says, begrudging. Unwilling. Embarrassed. Not knowing where she came from was often nearly as awful—worse, sometimes—than not knowing where she wanted to _go_. “I have a scar, actually, towards the back, but—I only remembered my name. My first name. Not that it was anything special, really, dozens and dozens of other girls in town were named Daphne, after the Greengrass—”

She breaks off, shrugging again, and glances out the carriage window, watching the gray-blue blur of the landscape roll by. It’s foggy, the struggling rays of sunlight too weak to slice through the curdling heft of the mid-morning mist. It’s eerie. It’s vacant.

“My family could be alive, I suppose,” she finishes awkwardly. “But if they are, they never bothered to search for me.”

Tom studies her, a deep, puckered furrow in his brow, a sparkle of something else in his eyes—something that makes the dark, liquid brown appear practically _crimson_ from a certain angle, shot through with bolts of red, scarlet and cinnamon and amber and cherry and ruby and a dozen others Daphne doesn’t even have the words for.  

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Tom says, his voice low, silky, before he stops, gaze still pinned to her face.

He leans forward, arm outstretched, to brush a tiny streak of what tastes like raspberry jam off the corner of her mouth—and his touch lingers, and his nostrils flare, and there’s a frustration to his demeanor, to how he’s hovering, encroaching, that’s at disconcerting odds with the rigidly self-contained confidence she’s come to associate him with.

“About what?” Daphne finds herself whispering—transfixed or hypnotized, like she’s fallen into one of those trances so common with mediums and fortune tellers and spiritualists.  

The carriage lurches and bumps, then, seeming to jolt Tom out of a daze of his own, and he leans back. “About a boy,” he says, his tone souring with a wistful, wrathful kind of nostalgia; a strange, entirely too chilling combination of emotions that don’t quite mesh. “An orphan, just like you. He worked for the Greengrasses.”

“What did he do?”

“Oh, this and that,” Tom says vaguely. “He was taken in by the family physician—not for any altruistic reasons, but because the family physician—well, some other members of the household, too—had been acquainted with the boy’s mother.”

“Oh. Acquainted with her in a—bad way?”

Tom smiles, a mirthless, mutilated thing, and curls his tongue over his front teeth, prodding at the point of an incisor. “The boy’s mother was an aristocrat. A disgraced one, obviously, but you can’t _erase_ blood, can you? It runs through all our veins. It’s inescapable.” He snorts. “You would _think_ that a _physician_ would be aware of that.”

Daphne shifts in her seat, gripping the edge of it tightly, her posture stiff with nerves. “What does this have to do with me? Or—well, not _me_ , of course, but, um, the Greengrasses?”

Tom puffs his cheeks out and drums his fingers against his thigh. His legs are long, his knees spread impolitely wide in the confines of the carriage, and there’s a _menace_ , almost, to how he’s sprawled out. Like he’s intent on taking up as much space as he can.  

“The boy was smart. Resourceful. Fundamentally ill-suited to a life of service, which both the butler and the physician . . . _realized,_ eventually,” Tom continues dispassionately. “But the physician, he was smart, too. Had a lot of secrets—a lot of unpopular opinions about the aristocracy, you know.”

“No,” Daphne says, frowning, “I don’t know.”

Tom toys idly with the brass-plated tassels hanging from the curtains. “The Greengrasses were important. A quarter-step from royalty. You’ve heard of the Malfoys? The Flints? The girls—the sisters—they were, one day, going to make incredibly advantageous marriages. Politically.”

Daphne’s spine tingles as her palms begin to sweat. “What does that have to do with—”

“Why, _Daphne_ , would a man—a smart man—ever let those incredibly _politically_ advantageous marriages come to fruition, if he didn’t have to? If his long-term plan was to completely dismantle the aristocracy?”

Daphne’s lips move soundlessly as she tries—as she fails—to process the enormity of what Tom’s implying. “Did he?” she croaks.

“Did he what?”

“Did he—” She pinches her fingers together. “Did he completely dismantle the aristocracy? Was it him?”

Tom sniffs. “He isn’t credited with it, no. Not officially.”

“But he killed them?” Daphne presses, a dully conspicuous ache pulling at her chest, her heartstrings, disruptive enough to her breathing that she has to pause, collect herself, _instruct_ herself—because this is all only as relevant to her, to her interests, as she allows it to be. “The Greengrasses. He killed them?”

Tom’s mouth quirks. “Someone did, yes.” He casts a caustic, markedly indifferent glance out the carriage window. “The boy, though. He got away.”

Daphne looks at Tom, then—really looks at him, not just a surface reading of his face, his features, the ever-present authority and the ever-lasting rage—and starts to wonder. Starts to _connect_. Her scalp is prickling again, just like it was at the Greengrass house, like a ravenous pack of ghosts are tickling the crown of her skull—right where her scar is—with the feathered end of a quill.

She’s wrong, surely.

She’s confused.

(No, she isn’t.)

 

* * *

 

It’s oppressively, unbearably quiet when they stop for dinner.

“So,” Daphne tries, trembling and over-bright, “where are you from, Tom?”

Tom lowers his chin, twirling his fork between his fingers, the sparse, gray-tinted evening light seeping in through their dingy upstairs window doing little to mask his disdain for—for what, exactly? Her? Her question? The wobbly, plain pine table Lestrange had to wipe down with one of his many handkerchiefs before it was clean enough to eat off of?

“Why does it matter where I’m from?” Tom drawls. “ _Daphne?_ ”

Daphne falters. “It doesn’t,” she says, voice strained. “I’m just—interested.”

He pauses, the tip of his tongue poking out, and then looks askance at Lestrange. “Edmond, where are we _from?_ ”

Lestrange chokes on his tea, cup rattling in its saucer as he all but drops it. “Um,” he croaks, “we’re from—that is to say—here and there, a bit of—well, _a lot_ of—”

Tom rolls his eyes. “I was born in London,” he says flatly. “Lestrange is French. Sort of. Where he’s from doesn’t matter, though, does it? You didn’t ask him.”

Daphne stiffens. “What does _that_ mean?”

Tom scoffs and tosses his fork aside, cracking his knuckles one by one as he slouches in his chair. “How do you think this is going to _go_ , Daphne?”

“What?”

“We’ve made you _look_ the part,” he says, gesturing to her clean face, her glossy hair, her expensive dress and her lace-trimmed gloves, “and as it is, you’re shockingly well-spoken for a girl whose pedigree is buried somewhere in the vicinity of a _sewer_ , but—after we unite you with Astoria Greengrass . . . what will _happen_ to you, I wonder?”

Daphne swallows, picking at the crust of a cucumber sandwich, wetting her lips and glance at Lestrange, whose gaze is resolutely trained on his own plate, his jaw set and his mouth shut.

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” she stammers.

Tom smiles at her, careless, easy, a bit unpleasant, if she’s being honest, and cocks a brow. “Even if Astoria believes you’re Daphne—her Daphne, the real Daphne—you won’t last three days in that fortress she calls a townhouse, will you?”

Daphne gapes at him, dismayed, bewildered, _mad,_ a needling pinch of anxiety—defensive, defeating—rooting around the back of her mind. Planting seeds. Wreaking havoc. A cornered prey animal lashing out, hissing and spitting.

“How do _you_ know?”

“Excuse me?”

“How do _you_ know how long I’ll last there?” she demands, nose twitching as she sniffs and tugs at the sleeves of her dress. “You said yourself that Astoria Greengrass is desperate to believe I’m—that her sister is alive. Wouldn’t that also mean she’s going to equally desperate to believe I’m _real_ once I’m _there?”_

Tom’s smile widens, turning more inviting, less combative—except there’s an undercurrent of nastiness there, too, that Daphne can’t quite gauge the sincerity of. “I did say that,” he acknowledges, “but that’s not the point, is it?”

She grits her teeth. “Then what _is?_ ”

“How old are you, Daphne?” Tom asks abruptly.

She blinks. “What?”

“How _old_ are you?” he repeats, tilting his head to the side. “Eighteen? Nineteen? Younger? Older? Do you even know?”

She dips her spoon into her soup, watching the grease spots ripple across the surface. She doesn’t take a bite. “Nineteen, maybe. Somewhere around there. No one could tell for sure.”

“Daphne Greengrass would be twenty now,” Tom says, lips pursed. “She was eight years younger than me. Can you do the arithmetic on that, or do you need me to do it for you?”

Daphne flushes. “You’re twenty-eight.”

“Yes, I am. How old was I when the revolution began?”

She moves around in her seat, chair creaking. “Fifteen?”

“Fifteen, yes, excellent,” he says, sounding distracted. “How old is fifteen?”

“I’m—excuse me?”

“Old enough to work? Care for a younger sibling? Decide your own future? Deserve _better?”_

She hesitates, uncertain. Wary. “I don’t know. It would depend, I suppose.”

“On what?”

“On . . . on the circumstances.”

“Is fifteen a _child’s_ age to you, then?”

“I—I don’t know,” she says again, flustered, fidgeting with the napkin in her lap, her gaze darting around the room, catching on the swaying tendrils of cobwebs in the corners, the dim oil lamps and the dusty wallpaper. “Why is that relevant?”

He stares at her, unflinchingly steady. Merciless. “It’s hard, isn’t it,” he eventually murmurs. “Being on your own.”

Daphne meets his eyes, pitch-dark and uncharacteristically expressive—not gentle, no, not that, but something close to it. Possessive. Pensive. Silk-lined and raw-edged. “It’s . . . not _fun_ , no.”

“The Greengrass massacre,” Tom says, and the shuddering shift of the conversation is as unexpected as it is jarring. “There was a bit more to it than what you know. Than what most people know.”

“Like what?” Daphne asks cautiously.

Lestrange starts to jiggle his knee under the table. “Tom, are you sure you want to—”

“The boy from the story I told you,” Tom continues, ignoring Lestrange, “he wasn’t _quite_ an orphan.”

“He wasn’t?”

“He had a father.” Tom huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “ _Everyone_ has a father, that’s the sad reality of science, isn’t it, but—no, he had a father who was _alive_ , for a time, and who was . . . aware. Of his existence. Exceedingly aware.”

“That’s . . . unfortunate.”

“The physician from the story,” Tom says, voice splintering with a brutal crack, “he knew, as well.”

“That the father was alive?”

“Mm.”

“What does that—”

“He killed him.”

Daphne’s breath hitches. “I’m . . . excuse me?”

“The boy,” Tom clarifies, and there’s a dead, lifeless, flinty quality to how he’s speaking now, an eerie blankness that Daphne’s terrified to peel back the layers of; to uncover the secrets lurking beneath. “He killed him.”

“He killed—his father?”

“With a stolen dueling pistol,” Tom says. “One bullet. Right through the head.”

Daphne’s stomach twists and tightens and heaves and she isn’t sure if it’s with nausea or adrenaline or both, if the hot-cold frisson of alarm running through her veins is a harbinger of more to come—of _worse_ to come—

“How—how old was—” She stops. Reaches out—slowly, as if she’s floating, only partially awake, through the haze of a dream—to straighten the handle of her butter knife so it lies perpendicular to her water glass. “The boy was fifteen, then?”

Tom smirks.

But before he can answer, there’s a brisk knock followed by a faint thud as a small rectangular box wrapped in wrinkled brown butcher paper is shoved through the newspaper slot in the door. There’s a symbol scrawled on top in patchy black ink—a triangle with a circle inside, neatly bisected by a vertical line—and an accompanying scent that’s harsh and sickly sweet and oddly familiar.

Tom frowns at it, seemingly nonplussed—

And then he’s leaping to his feet, sending his chair flying backwards with a clatter, snarling, _“Fuck_ ,” as he lunges for the window pull, yanking it open, scooping the box up and hurling it outside, “fuck, fuck, _fuck!”_

The fiery explosion in the empty courtyard, when it comes a few moments later, is almost anticlimactic.

And Daphne’s struck still and silent and dumb—by the speed of it all, by the violence, by her sudden and utterly harrowing understanding of who Tom is, of what he’s capable of and how he fits into the story she’s claimed as her own; but it’s her _reaction_ to that revelation that she’s struggling to identify, put a name to, _define._

She’s upset.

She’s appalled.

She’s afraid.

(No, she’s not.)

 

* * *

 


	3. Part III

* * *

 

Night has fallen and the air is razor-crisp with an insidious, unseasonably cold breeze.

Astoria Greengrass’s townhouse is tall and skinny, red bricked and white shuttered, tidily terraced with a waist-high black fence and a scraggly row of autumn-sparse flowerbeds. There’s an unexplainable, decidedly unsettling sense of abandonment looming over the shallow slate roof—the lazily spinning cast-iron weathervane and the noticeably dormant chimney, the twilight darkened windows and the fog-drenched, yellow-green halo of the nearby streetlamp.

The steep stone steps leading up to the front door are wider at the bottom than they are at the top, but that isn’t what has Tom and Lestrange frozen in their tracks.

The front door—navy blue, with a gleaming brass knocker shaped like a roaring lion—has been kicked in, splintered open, left to sway haphazardly on squeaking, uneven hinges. The acrid, sour-smoky stench of gunpowder is ringing out, loud and obvious, distinct like a banshee wail, and Daphne’s never held a gun before, never so much as _seen_ a gun before, she hasn’t, she would swear it on a Bible, on her _life_ , but—

She takes one breath, and she’s transported.

She’s in a long, semi-dark hallway, walnut-paneled and richly carpeted, and she’s young, she’s so _young_ ¸ she’s barefoot in a white linen nightgown, her hair in two lopsided braids on either side of her head, and her breath is rattling in her lungs as she hiccups on a sob, her eyes grit-glassy with unshed tears, her cheeks salt-soaked and her skin _tight_ , too tight, like it might split and rip if she moves the wrong way, and she’s creeping under a sputtering oil lamp, her shadow almost comically misshapen, grotesquely large where it’s stretching across the floor—and there’s shouting, there’s _screaming,_ distant and echoing and not, too, the burgeoning pop of two then three then _four_ gunshots in rapid succession, one after another, and there’s more, there’s _more,_ there’s the sound of shattering glass and the guttural whisper of a fire igniting and a _smell_ , sickly sweet and immemorably harsh, stinging, painful, and there are footsteps pounding closer and terror is gripping her with a ferocity she isn’t at all sure she’ll be able to survive, but her hindbrain seems to understand that she needs to leave, needs to _flee_ , and she’s running, she’s scurrying, she’s reaching the end of the hall just in time to see the train of a mauve silk ballgown swish around the far corner and—

Another scream.

Another shot.

A growling cheer, and then a medicinal green bottle with a blister of yellow-orange flames licking up the neck is tossed through a broken window, rolling through glinting shards of glass and plaster, and a slender man in a vibrant red cape appears—a man she _knows_ , she realizes with a debilitating frisson of dread, horror, betrayal, because his eyes are a twinkling sky-blue and his smile is hard, triumphant, and—

A hand grabs her elbow, hauling her up, dragging her backwards.

She gasps, and a dark-haired boy in a blood-stained white shirt and a pair of threadbare brown trousers is clapping his other hand over her mouth, tucking her protectively under his arm, melting into the cleverly disguised entrance of a servant stairwell—to help her? To hide her?

“Didn’t waste a _minute_ , did he,” the boy mutters, pushing her along, and the stairs are unfamiliar, narrow, worn smooth in places her feet aren’t familiar with, and she’s tripping over the hem of her nightgown before she can regain her balance, pitching forward, and there aren’t any railings and there’s barely any light and he’s too far behind to grab her, to _catch_ her, and—

Pain.

Nothing.

Pain.

Nothing.

“ _Daphne_ ,” Tom is saying now, low, insistent, his body angled in front of hers, their fingers tangled together, the slow, methodical tap-tap-tap of his thumb against her knuckles oddly distracting. Oddly calming. “You still with me, sweetheart?”

Daphne blinks up at him, the crushing, petrifying, _staggering_ weight of her memory—and it _was_ a memory, she’d touched and tasted and smelled and seen and _felt_ , she’d felt it all—rendering her momentarily speechless. She reflexively squeezes his hand, like she’s asking for comfort, for reassurance, and he glances away, clenching and unclenching his jaw, before he moves closer, close enough for the long, warm line of him to press right up against her.

“You saved me,” she croaks, like she’s been screaming for real.

Tom jerks in surprise, spinning to look at her, still so close, too close, his gaze inscrutable. “What do you mean?” he asks sharply. “What do you mean I _saved_ you?”

She doesn’t respond—not verbally, at least—just lifts his hand and draws it up and back, to the crown of her head.

He touches her gently, with careful, clinical precision, mapping out the knotted sliver of scar tissue; and she’s expecting it, mostly, when he meets her eyes, lowers his hand to the nape of her neck, scans her face—searching, inquisitive, but with an added gleam of something else, something darker, something that swirls and thickens and simmers between them like summer-melted molasses.

He doesn’t lean down.

No, he pulls her up, draws her in, and his lips—their lips—they brush, graze, catch, and it’s soft, shockingly soft, tender and tentative, both, the slip and the slide and the friction all utterly foreign to her, utterly enchanting, beguiling, _addicting_ —because she’s never done this. She’s dreamed of it, abstractly, dreamed of a grand romance, a dramatic declaration, a sweet, charming, handsome man who would treasure her, _love_ her—

Who would kiss her, just like Tom is kissing her, with a quiet edge of desperation, like he can’t quite _help_ himself.

“I’m her, aren’t I,” Daphne whispers, her breath mingling with Tom’s. She doesn’t have the strength—the _fortitude_ —to let go of him. To stand on her own. “I’m—I’m _her._ You were there. You _saved_ me.”

“You fell,” he says, smoothing his palm down the valley between her shoulder blades. He isn’t tense, but there’s a steadiness to his demeanor, to his voice, that shouldn’t be natural. Shouldn’t be _easy._ “Down the stairs. And you were so small, and you wouldn’t wake up, but you weren’t dead, and there wasn’t _time_ —I hid you in the cellar while I doubled back to figure out how to . . . how to get us out. When I finally returned, though, you were gone. I assumed you’d been . . . I didn’t expect . . .”

He’s cut off by a strangled, frantic shout coming from inside the townhouse, a faint gurgle and then an ominous thud, and his posture stiffens, the muscles in his back cramping up, firm and unyielding.

“You didn’t expect what?” Daphne asks urgently, twisting her fingers in the black satin lining of his jacket. “Tom?”

Tom tucks a strand of hair behind her hear. “Daphne,” he murmurs, and then he’s sweeping her up into a hard, bruising kiss, swiping at her bottom lip with his tongue, a flick, a tease, a tantalizing glimpse of what must come next, briefly caressing the scar on the crown of her head as he pulls away. “Daphne _Greengrass_.”

It’s an answer.

It’s a confession.

She tells herself it isn’t enough; that it can’t be enough.

(No, she doesn’t.)

 

* * *

 

There are two bodies on the drawing room floor.

One of them is Lestrange—still alive, Daphne thinks dimly, albeit unconscious, a ghastly violet bruise blossoming across his cheek, his chest rising and falling with slow, worryingly shallow breaths as he lies sprawled out behind a pinstriped yellow sofa—but the second—

Daphne doesn’t remember having a sister.

Daphne doesn’t remember growing up on a lavish country estate with an army of loyal servants and a stable full of thoroughbreds, doesn’t remember the silk sheets or the sugary pastries, the sweet-smelling bath oils or the emerald green lawns—she doesn’t remember much of anything, really, not her parents, not her bedroom, not her _sister_.

Astoria Greengrass.

Astoria Greengrass is dead.

She’s flat on her back in front of a stately white marble fireplace, one arm flung up above her head, one crossed over her lower abdomen, the soft blue wool of her dress spreading out around her legs like a puddle of water. A single bullet hole mars the otherwise smooth skin of her forehead, crusted iron-red with blood, and her eyes—large, almond-shaped, hazel; similar but not identical to Daphne’s—are wide, wide open.

Empty.

Sightless.

Daphne can’t quite pinpoint what it is she’s feeling—what it is that’s rushing through her head, pounding at her eardrums, needling and prickling and sour-milk rancid; it’s a bit of everything, fury and sorrow and helpless, gutless fear, despair, grief, a yearning for what could have been, for what _should_ have been, for a reunion, however fragmented, however stilted, with someone she had, once upon a time, shared a home and a family and a _life_ with.

It’s naked vulnerability and it’s unbridled rage and it’s new, it’s different, it’s utterly, wholly, viscerally separate from the blurry ignorance and the placid resentment and the constantly wavering, dishwater-dull uncertainty of where she belongs, of what she deserves, because—

Because it isn’t this.

Because it’s _never_ been this.

Astoria Greengrass is dead, and Daphne Greengrass is not.

Astoria Greengrass is dead, and Daphne Greengrass is _alive_.

A man is standing over Astoria’s body, tall and slender, middle-aged, something sad and uncomfortable and painfully sincere skirting around the edges of his frown; he’s wearing a sleekly tailored dove-gray suit, a burgundy necktie and a shiny gold pocket watch, boots polished and red-blond hair combed back, his throat bobbing as he swallows. He has one hand tucked into his trouser pocket, and a heavy amethyst paperweight clutched in the other—what he hit Lestrange with, Daphne guesses, her gaze swiveling over to Tom.

Tom, who has his own gaze locked on the other man, the stranger, his lip curled and his fists clenched. “Albus Dumbledore,” he drawls, stepping forward, into the lamplight. “Where’s your partner in crime?”

Daphne blinks, still hovering in the doorway, peering uneasily around the rest of the drawing room—arm chairs and bookshelves, a cut-crystal decanter of brandy on a sterling silver tray, a ticking clock and a trio of gilt-framed landscape paintings and a _pistol_ , ivory-handled and elaborately engraved, lying discarded on the rug by her feet.

She bends down, slowly, silently, fluidly, like she’s not in control of her own limbs, and picks up the pistol.

It’s warm.

“ _Partner?”_ Dumbledore repeats, with a faint flicker of amusement. It _irks_ Daphne, that tone, that he’s capable of sounding like that while her sister is _dead_ , right there, right on the floor, right in front of him. “Oh, Tom. You of _all_ people should know that I haven’t associated with Gellert in many, many years.” A pause, and then a quick glance at Astoria’s body. “It’s a shame you dragged this poor girl into whatever your latest . . . _scheme_ is. She didn’t need to die like this.”

“No?” Tom bites out, acid-vicious, wicked-sharp. “What about the rest of her family? Did _they_ need to die like this?”

Dumbledore’s expression quakes and shutters with the force of his flinch. “ _Her_ blood is not on my hands,” he says evenly. Unconvincingly. “It’s on yours.”

“No, it’s not,” Tom says dismissively. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Didn’t you?”

“No,” Tom says again, more deliberately, “I didn’t. Unlike you, I have no qualms about _taking responsibility_ for my actions.”

“Responsibility,” Dumbledore scoffs. “More like _credit_.”

“Excuse me?”

“You were _proud_ of it,” Dumbledore says, with a hint of incredulity, bitter and haunted. “Of what you did.”

Tom works his jaw, and Daphne reflexively tightens her grip on the pistol.

“I still am,” Tom says lowly. “I’d kill him again, if I had the chance. And again. And _again_. You know why, _Albus?_ ”

“No, Tom.” Dumbledore’s nostrils flare, even as that same bone-deep sadness from earlier makes a fleeting reappearance. “No, I don’t know why.”

“Because he _deserved_ it,” Tom hisses, taking another step forward, waving his arm like a ringmaster preparing to unveil a particularly gruesome sideshow. “He deserved it, just like you did, just like you _do_ , because no matter how _hard_ you try to forget it—no matter how much self-flagellating _penance_ you do up at that _boarding school_ —it was _you_ who unlocked the gates that night, wasn’t it?”

Dumbledore pales. “How do you—”

“It was _you_ who let Grindelwald into the house,” Tom goes on, voice growing louder, more brutal, “and it was _you_ who _knew_ what he had planned, who _knew_ what was going to happen, how many people were going to _die_ —”

“ _Tom_.”

“—and it was _you_ who did _nothing_ to stop it.” Tom’s teeth clack as he shuts his mouth and huffs out a caustic, breathless, _cutting_ laugh. “And you _dare_ to suggest that our sins are remotely comparable?”

Dumbledore studies Tom, his face twisted, his brow creased, his fingers loosening around the amethyst paper weight, but before he can speak again—

“I remember you,” Daphne blurts out. “You lived with us. You were—you were my father’s physician. Dumbledore. You used to—candy. Lemon drops. You gave us candy.”

Dumbledore’s chin jerks up and to the side, as if he’s been struck, a stark, gradual, portentously awful realization beginning to dawn, clear as day, in the winter-dry wobble of his lower lip. “Dear god,” he breathes, visibly confounded, “Is that—are you—"

“Yes,” Daphne interrupts. “Yes, I’m exactly who you think I am.”

Dumbledore shoots a disbelieving glare at Tom. “You dragged _her_ into this, too? Are you _mad?_ Gellert’s going to be after her as soon as—”

“He’s already after her,” Tom says flatly. “Two bombs so far—your spies are exceedingly efficient.”

“They are not _my_ sp—”

“Tom didn’t drag me into anything,” Daphne snaps, and her voice is shaking and her eyes are burning but her hand—her hand is _steady_ around the pistol, her thumb smoothing, roving and restless, over the serrated metal grooves in the hammer. “He _saved_ me. Protected me. _Found_ me. What have you done, besides murder my family? Hide?”

Dumbledore’s mask of soulful, unerring regret momentarily falters.

And it’s abrupt, and it’s terrible, and it’s harrowing and it’s sinister and it’s intensely, gratuitously _distressing_ —but all she can see, all she can _remember_ , is a pair of twinkling blue eyes and a hard, triumphant smile and blood. So much blood. The sickening, stomach-turning stench of it. How could she have ever forgotten that?

How could she have ever _lost_ that?

“Tom Riddle is not a good man, Daphne,” Dumbledore says, placating, gentle, tragic. “Taking his side—”

“ _His_ side?” Daphne bleats, and then chokes out a laugh, has to, a crinkling, high-pitched giggle that reminds her of shattered glass and shrieking nuns and sparrows fighting over a stale scrap of bread. “No. _My_ side. _My_ family. _My_ life. Not his, not _yours_. _Mine_.”

Tom has shifted, slightly, to stare at her, his jaw slack, his gaze intent, an unfamiliar emotion brewing, one that’s too calculating to be awe but too appreciative to be a tactical error; and it’s nothing like how he’s looked at her before, like how he looked at her earlier, because at various points she’s been vaguely useful to him and vaguely interesting to him and even, more often than not, vaguely _attractive_ to him—but she’s never been irreplaceable. She’s never been special. She’s never been valuable.

She suspects she might be, now.

She suspects she might finally have something—might finally _be_ something—that’s uniquely, unequivocally _hers_.

A name.

A past.

A future.

Wordlessly, she cocks the hammer on the pistol.

“Tom is right,” she says to Dumbledore, thinking of the bloodstains on the walls of the old Greengrass house, of the scar on the crown of her head, of all the things, all the people, all the chances and all the time and all the _memories_ she’ll never get back. “You deserve this.”

Astoria Greengrass is dead, and Daphne Greengrass is not.

Astoria Greengrass is dead, and Daphne Greengrass is—

“Sorry,” she adds, shutting one eye, taking aim, channeling some long-ago shooting lesson with a fond, aristocratic accent in her ear, the excited yip of a hunting dog vanishing on the tail of a late spring breeze. “Really, I am.”

(No, she’s not.)

 

* * *

 

 

“Well,” Lestrange says, exaggeratedly cheerful, kicking at the bucket by his feet, sloshing soapy, blood-tinged water over the rim, “that’s done. Round of applause, eh?”

Tom heaves a sigh, the backs of his knuckles grazing the nape of Daphne’s neck as he sprawls out next to her on the pinstriped sofa. “For what?”

“What’s that?”

“ _Round of applause, eh_ ,” Tom mimics, rolling his eyes. “For _what?_ ”

Lestrange cracks his knuckles and tosses a damp pink handkerchief aside. “For—I mean, we’re all still alive, aren’t we?” His smile slips a notch. “Can’t, uh, can’t really say that about . . . about those two.”

An awkward silence descends, and Daphne takes a deep breath as she mentally scrambles to organize the jumbled, blurry chaos of her thoughts. She needs to be reasonable. Logical. There’s a frankly unprecedented tremor of optimism bubbling up inside of her, thrumming through her veins, and she isn’t quite sure where it’s coming from. What she should do about it. What she should do _with_ it.

She’s never had anything to look forward to before.

It’s freeing.

It’s paralyzing.

“Do me a favor, Edmond,” Tom says, leveling Daphne with a sidelong glance that’s as shrewd as it is hungry. Greedy. Possessive. “Go check the rest of the house—bedrooms, servants’ quarters, all of it—Astoria lived alone, but I doubt she _was_ alone when Grindelwald got here.” He nods his chin at the pistol Daphne had carefully placed on the coffee table. “Take that with you.”

Lestrange’s face spasms with a contradictory blend of bemusement and apprehension, and then he winces, prodding at the ugly purple bruise on his cheek as he shuffles towards the door, shirttails flapping, suspenders hanging loose around his hips.

“I’ll, uh, just give you a shout, then, if I’m accosted by one of those Greater Good fanatics in the water closet,” he mumbles, tucking the pistol into the waistband of his trousers. “That’s—fine. Dandy, even. Nothing can possibly go wr—”

“Edmond,” Tom says again, eerily, uncharacteristically patient.

“What?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m not—”

“ _Go_. Now.”

“I’m _going_ ,” Lestrange says, mulish and sulky, stomping off down the hallway. “See, I’m gone!”

Tom waits several seconds, head cocked, like he’s listening for—footsteps, or voices, or a loud, blundering commotion.

And then a very different type of silence descends.

Daphne watches him lick his lips, a curious, curlicue spiral of heat unfurling in the pit of her stomach. He’s only partially facing her, the squared-off slant of his jaw sharper, leaner, than it usually is, and his eyes are downcast, lashes fanning out, casting delicate tree-branch shadows on the curve of his cheek—his posture is casual, his demeanor relaxed, his arm stretched out across the back of the sofa, directly behind her, the slow, seemingly mindless way he’s dangling his wrist, brushing his hand against her hair, her skin, becoming more and more difficult to ignore.

“You’re an heiress, you know,” he eventually says, and there’s a teasing, almost patronizing lilt to his voice, like he’s telling himself a joke, privately, inappropriately; equally, though, there’s a hint of _challenge_ , too, like he’s inviting her to try and figure out what it is. “This—” He gestures to the drawing room. “This was all hers. Your sister’s. It should have been yours.”

Daphne swallows. “It is.”

“Mm?”

“It _is_ mine,” she says more clearly, more firmly, leaning into Tom’s side, dropping her head back, bottling up a plaintive, desperate _noise_ when he lowers his arm enough to drape it over her shoulder, pull her in closer. “Now, I mean. It’s mine.”

Tom pauses, looking at her, his expression slithering rapidly between evident surprise and a silky-seductive kind of contemplation—but then he raises his hand, using the tip of one finger to tilt her chin up, hold her in place, and she _shivers_.

“Gellert Grindelwald wants me dead, too,” Daphne whispers, her breath hitching, stalling, stuttering as Tom brings his other hand up to the hollow of her throat. “Doesn’t he?”

Tom drags his fingers down, spreading them out, across the wings of her collarbones and the satin-covered buttons on her dress and lower, too, tracing the shape of her, the skeletal seam of her corset and the plump curves of her breasts, returning his attention to her face, her _mouth_ , as he taps the pad of his thumb against her bottom lip.

“We can make him regret that,” Tom murmurs, leaning in, nuzzling the underside of her jaw, skating his teeth over the shell of her ear. “We can make all of them _pay_ , sweetheart.”

Daphne allows herself to fall backwards when Tom kisses her, more aggressively than he had earlier, hot and open-mouthed and overwhelming, his tongue curling, exploring, lingering, slick and soft and fast and filthy, and she can’t quite keep up and she can’t quite decide if he even expects her to, no, but she’s _dizzy_ with how fiercely, perilously, recklessly brave she suddenly feels, like she’s been standing on the edge of that awful, crumbling cliff the nuns used to take them to, the one above the river, the one that she always had to be pushed off, her heels dug in, her eyes squeezed shut—

This time, she’d jumped.

This time, she’d _soared_.

_I’m not going to hurt you,_ Tom had said, the very moment they’d met, practically, before she’d even known his name, and it had sounded like a lie, then. A baseless, pointless platitude. A trap.

Now, though—

_I’m not going to hurt you_ , she hears again, again, a perennial echo, and it sounds like a _promise_.

“Yes,” Daphne gasps, finally, tugging Tom down for another kiss; his body is settling over hers, broad, heavy, _hard_ , his arms bracketing her head and his knee slotting right between her legs, her thighs, as her spine tingles and arches and her hips roll. “Yes, we can.”

(Yes, they _will_.)

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some things:
> 
> 1\. i added an "unreliable narrator" tag because in hindsight that's literally a plot point  
> 2\. there were context + dialogue clues throughout, but in case it wasn't clear (it wasn't, lmao, daphne definitely didn't want to know): astoria was in hiding as the unwitting/unwilling figurehead of a kind of grassroots aristocratic "rebellion" that tom was plotting. tom was searching for a daphne look-alike to distract/manipulate/potentially blackmail astoria with. you can interpret the rest however you want, but dumbledore wasn't wrong when he said astoria's death was tom's fault  
> 3\. i loved writing this fic in a way i haven't loved writing a fic in a very long time which is extremely fine and normal in my opinion  
> 4\. y'all probably didn't think i was going to finish this, did you  
> 5\. HA  
> 6\. comments/kudos appreciated, thanks for indulging me, hope you enjoyed yourselves, etc etc
> 
> xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


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